This page contains resources supporting the ScrumMaster classes delivered by Arne Åhlander.
You will find the course material, links to Scrum and ScrumMaster resources as well as an extensive list of books.
This page is constantly updated and thus worth returning to.
Course Material
- You can download flipchart illustrations >>here.
Scrum Guide
- Scrum Guide online (and pdf)
Recommended sites & blogs
- Agile Manifesto
- Scrum Alliance
- Mountain Goat Software (Mike Cohn)
- ronjeffries.com (Ron Jeffries)
- Scrum Inc. (Jeff Sutherland)
- Planning Poker
- Innolution (Kenny Rubin)
To Download
- The New New Product Development Game – by Takeuchi and Nonaka
- The ScrumMaster Checklist (Free)
- A Leaders Framework for Decision Making (Cynefin) – Good read for managers
- Mindmap of the ScrumMaster responsibilities
- Reusable Scrum Presentation – by Mountain Goat Software
Timeboxing
- The Benefits of Timeboxing – Blog post by Kenny Rubin, author of Essential Scrum
Sprint Goal
- Using the Sprint Goal, Technical Excellence & Delivering Value – Article by Jurgen De Smet
- The 11 Advantages of Using a Sprint Goal – by Barry Overeem
- The Product Owner’s Guide to Effective Sprint Goals – Blog post by Roman Pichler
- The Sprint Goal Template – by Roman Pichler
- A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF… The Sprint Goal – Blog post by Sjoerd Nijland
- Apply FOCUS to set great Sprint Goals – Blog post by Maarten Dalmijn
- Examples of Real Sprint Goals – Blog post by Christian Verwijs
Feature Teams
- Feature Teams – Chapter from the book “Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile” by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde
Tools
- Summary of Scrum tools with a list of pros and cons
Estimation
- Article covering estimation research results
- Blogpost regarding relative estimation – It’s effort, not complexity
- Blogpost by Mike Cohn about estimation – Don’t Equate Story Points to Hours
Definition of Done
- Definition of Done by Mitch Lacey
- The Power of Done
- Definition of Done in LeSS
- How to Create a Definition of Done
- Examples of Definition of Done
- Other examples of Definition of Done
- Everything you need to know about Acceptance Criteria
Servant Leadership
- What is Servant Leadership?
- 9 Qualities of the Servant Leader
- Ten Characteristics of a Servant-Leader
Facilitation and Powerful Questions
- The Art of Powerful Questions
- Facilitation Resources
- Liberating Structures
- The Core Protocols
- The Listening ScrumMaster
- Questions to explore problems
- How To Ask Better Questions
- Good Leadership Is About Asking good Questions
- The Art of Asking Questions
- Learn to Ask Better Questions
- Powerful Questions Can Have a Powerful Effect
- Powerful Questions for Agile Teams
- What Might Happen if You Asked a Powerful Question?
- Stop giving answers… ask some powerful questions instead
- Nine Questions ScrumMasters and Product Owners should be asking
- Six Thinking Hats
- World Café
Retrospective
- Retrospectives by Liz Keogh
- Retromat – to plan retrospectives
- Fun Retrospectives – activities and ideas for making agile retrospectives more engaging
- Retrospective Techniques – a Trello board for Coaches, Scrum Masters, and Other Facilitators
- Agile Retrospective – activities, ideas and tips on how to run an effective agile retrospective
- Temperature Reading – Description
- Temperature Reading – Helpful hints
Focus vs multitasking
Story Mapping
Anatomy
- Innovation in Project Management
- New (yet not so new) techniques for managing complexity in projects
Team related
- Teamwork
- The New Science of Building Great Teams – Harvard Business Review
- Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others – The New York Times
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni & The Table Group
- When teams get healthier, the whole organization benefits – McKinsey
- Self Organization
- Presentation by Mike Cohn on: Leading a Self Organizing Team
- Glenda Eoyang: Conditions for Self-Organizing in Human Systems
- Robert Dilts: NLP and Self Organization Theory
- Wikipedia: Self-organization
- James Kelly and Scott Nadler: Leading from Below or >>here
- Books:
- James Surowiecki: The wisdom of Crowds
- Jon R. Katzenbach: The Wisdom of Teams : Creating the High-Performance Organization
- Peter DeGrace and Leslie Hulet Stahl: Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions: A Catolog of Modern Engineering Paradigms
- Psychological Safety
- What Google Learned From Its Quest To Build The Perfect Team – Article in The New York Times Magazine
- High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It – Article from Harvard Business Review
- Understanding Team Effectiveness – Results from Project Aristotle at Google
User Stories
- What is a User Story (including examples)
Story splitting
- Richard Lawrence has written lots about Story Splitting
- Lasse Koskela has written:
- Gojko Adzic
- J. B. Rainsberger
- James Grenning
- Bill Wake
- Tim Ottinger & Jeff Langr
- Breaking Down Larger Stories (Agile in a Flash)
- Joshua Kerievski
- OKR Quickstart
- Lean Agile Training
Architecture & Design
Technical debt
- Technical debt – video clip of Ward Cunningham about the metaphor technical debt
- Technical Debt Quadrant – Martin Fowler’s thoughts on what kinds of design flaws should or shouldn’t be classified as Technical Debt
Product Backlog
- Demystifying Product Backlog Concepts – blogpost by Kenny Rubin
- Product Backlog Example – created by Mike Cohn
- The Product Backlog with sample – by Mitch Lacey
Patterns
Agile Contracts
- Agile Contracts – Chapter from the book “Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile” by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde
- 10 suggestions of Agile contracts created by Peter Stevens
- Collected ideas for Contracts on Agile projects
Contracts between team members
Scaling Scrum
- LeSS – Large Scale Scrum
- A short 3 minutes video on the basics of LeSS by Michael James
- An 8 minutes Introduction to LeSS video
- Three blog posts on descaling your Scrum by Jim Coplien
Scrum or Kanban
- 5 Right Reasons to Apply Kanban
- 5 Wrong Reasons to Apply Kanban
- Why switching to Kanban won’t solve your problems
Scrum beyond software
- Scrum in schools (5 min 21 sec)
Performance appraisals
In some countries I get questions about how individual performance appraisals are delt with in Scrum.
My short and long answer is contained in a blogpost: Performance appraisals
Videos
- Scrum Training Series – Michael James (six videos. 9-17 minutes long)
- How Misconceptions About the Product Owner Role Harm Your Organization and What To Do About It – By Michael James
- Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us – Dan Pink (10 min 47 sec)
- Coordination chaos – by Gosei (4 min 5 sec) Read more at https://gosei.fi/coordinationchaos/
- The Wrong way to do Agile – Team Structure (53 sec)
- Terry Tate – Office Linebacker (3 min 41 sec)
- Technical debt metaphor – Ward Cunningham (4 min 44 sec)
Recommended Reading to learn more about Scrum, Agile, Leadership, etc.
Scrum
- Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process, (Kenneth S. Rubin) https://a.co/d/chszu1d
- The Enterprise and Scrum, (Ken Schwaber) http://tinyurl.com/8rdsp3
- Agile Product Management with Scrum, (Roman Pichler) http://tinyurl.com/38z2o25
- A Scrum Book – The Spirit of the Game, ( Jeff Sutherland, James Coplien, et al) https://a.co/d/d1l3sQO
ScrumMaster related
- Scrum Mastery – From Good to Great Servant-Leadership, (Geoff Watts) https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Mastery-Good-Great-Servant-Leadership/dp/0957587406/
Coaching
- Coaching Agile Teams, (Lyssa Adkins) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321637704
- Toolbox for the Agile Coach – visualization examples, (Jimmy Janlén) https://tinyurl.com/hyxav9h
Retrospectives
- Agile Retrospectives – Making Good Teams Great, (Esther Derby and Diana Larsen) http://tinyurl.com/8amwq6
- Project Retrospectives, (Norman Kerth) http://tinyurl.com/74oatu
Facilitation
- Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, (Sam Kaner et al.) https://a.co/d/1IngjcE
Teamwork
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, (Patrick Lencione) http://tinyurl.com/a8eaty
Lean
- Lean Software Development – An Agile Toolkit, (Mary Poppendieck) http://tinyurl.com/8lsc4v
- Implementing Lean Software Development, (Mary Poppendieck) http://tinyurl.com/835wae
- This is Lean – Resolving the Efficiency Paradox, (N. Modig, P. Åhlström) https://a.co/d/chszu1d
Agile
- Agile Software Development – The Cooperative Game, (Alistair Cockburn) http://tinyurl.com/7kyfp4
- Agile Adoption Patterns, (Amr Elssamadisy) http://bit.ly/11SPnU
- Agile Software Development with Scrum, (Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle) http://tinyurl.com/9otcge
- Agile Project Management with Scrum, (Ken Schwaber) http://tinyurl.com/8gxw5b
- Agile Estimating and Planning, (Mike Cohn) http://tinyurl.com/39memw
- User Stories Applied, (Mike Cohn) http://tinyurl.com/9tl6w7
- Succeeding with Agile, (Mike Cohn) http://bit.ly/VAHvj
- The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility, (Michele Sliger, Stacia Broderick) http://amzn.to/awCcxx
- The Art of Agile Development, (James Shore) http://tinyurl.com/8qx4ld
- Managing Agile Projects, (Sanjiv Augustine) http://tinyurl.com/7f67en
- Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World, (Venkat Subramaniam, Andy Hunt) http://tinyurl.com/6v6koh
- Changing Software Development: Learning to become Agile, (Allan Kelly) http://tinyurl.com/7srecg
- Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development, (James Coplien) http://tinyurl.com/2wq8u7t
Scaling
- Scaling Lean & Agile Development, (Craig Larman, Bas Vodde) http://bit.ly/hJT8E
Leadership
- Organizational Culture and Leadership, (Edgar H. Schein et al.) http://a.co/d/cIEvu8A
- Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, (Edgar H. Schein) http://a.co/d/e5OHOh9
- Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust, (Edgar H. Schein et al.) http://a.co/d/0rpRnen
- The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager, (Daniel Mezick) http://a.co/d/6e8oNoQ
- The Servant as Leader, (Robert Greenleaf) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008K5IPB8
- Management 3.0: Leading Agile Develepors, Developing Agile Leaders, (Jurgen Appelo) http://tinyurl.com/6gt8b72
- Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love, (Richard Sheridan) https://a.co/d/5LJFYCW
- Chief Joy Officer: How Great leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear, (Richard Sheridan) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735218226
- Turn the Ship Around, (David Marquet) https://a.co/d/4vKV54F
- Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management, (Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby) http://tinyurl.com/7qowon
- Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace, (Ricardo Semler) http://a.co/9zbVXxx
Other good stuff
- Death by Meeting, (Patrick Lencioni) https://a.co/d/bxHCI8T
- Software by Numbers, (Mark Denne, Jane Cleland-Huang) http://tinyurl.com/ygcrz36
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, (Daniel H. Pink) https://a.co/d/iBMylc9
- Software Design Decoded: 66 Ways Experts Think, (Marian Petre and André vad der Hoek) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262035189
- 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
- 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
- Start with Why
- Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Simon Sinek) https://a.co/d/3iaLVzF
- www.startwithwhy.com
- TED talk: http://bit.ly/1vlM0N2
- The Mythical Man-Month, (Frederick P. Brooks) http://tinyurl.com/yajg6uy
- The Goal, (Eli Goldratt) https://a.co/d/jerwx88
- It’s not luck, (Eli Goldratt) https://a.co/d/ixZo0Tc
- Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is, (Donald C. Gause and Gerald M. Weinberg) http://tinyurl.com/9ykknv
- Managing the Design Factory (Donald Reinertsen) http://tinyurl.com/bmgnj7
- Crossing the Chasm, (Geoffrey A. Moore) http://tinyurl.com/3ysekq
- The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development, (Don Reinertsen) http://tinyurl.com/3348ytu
- Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, (M. Mitchell Waldrop) http://tinyurl.com/83jnkn
- The Seven-day Weekend: A Better Way to Work in the 21st Century, (Ricardo Semler) http://a.co/9ztTnzQ
- Six Thinking Hats, (Edward de Bono) http://a.co/d/h8T8tYT